Widow's Walk
by BushRat8
Summary: A sequel to RUINATION in two brief chapters. The innkeeper of Grantham House circles the widow's walk day and night, longing for Captain Barbossa's return. When he does, things are not as he left them.
1. The Innkeeper

A/N: Barbossa did not age during the Curse and his subsequent "first death," so the age gap between him and the innkeeper isn't nearly as great as it was at the beginning of RUINATION, when she was 14 and he was in his mid-30s. He's around 50 at the start of this story; 65 at the end. On Stranger Tides has been taken into account, but not in great detail.

When widow's walks were constructed around chimneys, bags of sand were often kept there, to be dumped down the chimney if a fire in the hearth got out of control.

* * *

~~ The Innkeeper ~~

* * *

The innkeeper is 39 now, a fine age to be reached in reasonable health, though she's seen by the townspeople to be dried-up and near dead for lack of a husband and children. Likewise Grantham House is only a shade of its former self, with just her bedroom, the kitchen and scullery, and her private parlor of any use. She kept the inn running as long as she could, but eventually closed its public rooms because she couldn't bear the intrusion of strangers upon her privacy anymore.

Still, this is how she wants it. Seven years ago, upon returning from his adventures, Barbossa made her a gift of a half-dozen pretty dresses, a black pearl ring for her finger, enough gold to keep her in tranquil ease for the rest of her life, and he bade her, should she wish it, to keep her bed warm for him whenever he should return to shore. "But know that the money ain't payment fer services rendered, darlin'," he murmured in his rumbling purr, taking her down on his lap to rub her back and offer further reassurance. "You always been a good girl, an' I'd ne'er treat you as anything less. 'Tis just that a man of my years wants his comforts and someone to talk to; someone to lo…" He kissed her cheek and raised an eyebrow, challenging her to understand the word he couldn't quite say. "Anyhow, I need a good woman in my life, for I be gettin' too old fer carousing an' such-like, see?"

As he promised, Barbossa returns regularly over the years, and each time he's ashore, they share not only the innkeeper's bed, but also the good food she cooks, drink and conversation and laughter, and she tries in all ways to be the companion and helpmeet he needs until the day he's obliged to go back to sea. "Nay, lass, stay abed," he whispers in her ear as he dresses himself. "I'd rather keep in me head the vision of ye lyin' there all soft an' rosy, not sobbin' yer eyes out at the docks."

"I'd never…"

"Ye would. You know ye would."

He never lets her make breakfast for him on those leaving days, but helps himself to a simple meal of ale and thick slices of buttered bread. "You have crumbs in your beard, my love," she always tells him when he comes upstairs for a last kiss farewell.

Though he might not say the words himself, the look in his eyes assures her of how pleased he is to hear them. "Until next time then, m' darlin'." It's what he always says.

Until the following year, and the year after that, when there isn't a next time, so she does as all left-behind sailors' women do: she begins to walk.

All of her life, the innkeeper has been petrified of Grantham's widow's walk, a lonely fenced circle of wood surrounding the central chimney. Her grandmother used to send her up there, hauling heavy bags of sand, and telling her that if she couldn't get them up the stairs, then it would be her fault if the house burned down. Fortunately, no fires occurred, but the feel of the rickety staircase beneath her feet never left her. Now, though, her fear wars with the need to keep watch for the man she loves, and there is no fear great enough to keep her from that.

For the first month, she stands and gazes out to sea, willing herself to see a ship's outline on the horizon. _It will be him, it must be him._ But through the next few weeks, she can no longer be still, and starts to pace. For hours and days and months she walks, never realizing that she's exhausted and growing thinner, unaware of the chill air until she begins to cough. But still, she can't bear to leave her watch lest Barbossa come home and she's not there to welcome him.

She doesn't know, in her terror that Barbossa might have died or forgotten her, that her dark hair has whitened. She can't even hear her own weeping.

This isn't the same as his going away when she was 18, leaving her with only her longings and imaginings about him, but no real knowledge. This time, it's the loss of a man she knows intimately well and whom she adores with all of her soul; so much, that she ignores the ugly talk about her by so-called respectable people. She knows what they've called her since the first time he came back: the pirate's whore.

She doesn't care. Better Barbossa's whore than any other man's wife… though she could never help secretly hoping for the one thing he wouldn't give: his name as her own. Still, all things considered, a name is of no importance when the man who owns it is lost.

 _Come home, Hector. Don't leave me; please come home._

The small figure pacing slowly atop Grantham House becomes a source of local novelty, with town children throwing rocks and vying to see if they can hit her. But the widow's walk is too high, so the brats have to be satisfied with breaking the inn's windows; something the innkeeper doesn't initially notice during the short occasions each day when she descends to the ground. Then it storms, and the water comes in to soak the curtains and warp the wooden floors, but she only looks at them sadly, because the damage doesn't matter. Her world has become the railed walkway; the only thing she sees, the ocean and other men's ships, but never the one she wants.

 _Come home, Hector,_ she begs, unable to keep back the tears. _Don't leave me, my love; please, please come home._

 _Please…_


	2. Barbossa

A/N: The shaking sickness is malaria. The flux is dysentery.

* * *

~~ Barbossa ~~

* * *

Barbossa straightens his clothes and hat, that he may look his best for his lady, though he fears for the look on her face when she sees the wooden peg that serves where his strong right leg used to be. Will she still want him once she knows how frightful the stump is?

 _Bloody nonsense,_ his sensible side tells him. _There's been more'n one time she's nursed you through an ugly bout of the shaking sickness, and ne'er once been put off._ Barbossa tries not to think of the miserable occasion when he came off the ship in the gruesome throes of the flux, and how gently she cared for him without a single complaint.

He keeps going up the familiar path, thankful to be home again — for 'home' is what he's long considered it — but as he gets closer, things seem nowhere near as right as they should be. The building has fallen into disrepair, and the yard is dry and untended. Renting rooms or not, he knows she would no more let her inn fall down than he would allow his ship to crumble.

"What is this?" Barbossa demands, grabbing the nearest passerby. "What's happened here? Where be the lady of Grantham House?"

The man he's accosted is too frightened to fight back, and in his fear, he blurts out the truth. "Gone," he gasps.

"What d' ye mean, 'gone'? She lived here all of her life; she wouldn't leave!"

"She didn't leave, she…"

"What? _What?_ "

"She died, sir; been dead these past four years! The doctor said 'twere some kind of consumption, but everyone else… we heard her crying on her widow's walk and knew 'twere a broken heart what killed her."

Barbossa's fingers go suddenly weak, allowing the man to pull away from him. "Where be her grave?" he asks softly. "Tell me, for I must know where the woman I love is laid to rest."

This is the first time he's said it, he realizes with a shock. Why couldn't he say the words the last time they were together? Though Barbossa's been preoccupied for eight long years with his plan to avenge the loss of his leg, why couldn't he at least have written a letter to let her know he was alive? He's spent all of his life convinced that he doesn't believe in regret, but that's only because he's never been faced with one of such terrible import before.

The other man doesn't know of Barbossa's inner torment as he leads him up a pathway, then points to the top of the hill. "There, sir. She didn't have family, so I heard the doctor saw to her burial."

 _Nay, 'tain't true! She had family; she had me!_ "Not in the churchyard?"

"Priest wouldn't have her. Said she were an ungodly strumpet and not worthy t' lie amongst decent folk…"

Barbossa's teeth are clenched, and he has to remind himself that this man is only giving him the information he asked for. As for the cleric, he'll be having words with him later, no doubt at the point of a sword. "On yer way, then," he says. "I'll be visitin' the lady alone, if ye don't mind."

The man needs no further excuse to get as far away as possible, and he heads down the hill.

Barbossa takes several deep breaths before stumping his way to the hilltop where a few sad-looking graves are scattered. When he gets there, he finds that most of the stones are old and have tumbled, but one plain wood slab is still straight and more-or-less new. _Sophie Grantham_ , it says. Nothing else. No dates of birth or death, which do not matter to anyone, nor does it say that she was loved by parents, husband, children; not even the grandmother for whom she slaved so many years ago.

He will change that in short order.

First, though, he clumsily sits down beside Sophie's grave, taking a drink from the flask inside his false leg before he runs a scarred hand over the marker, delicately tracing her name with his fingertips. "Ye thought I deserted you, lassie," he says quietly, his voice trembling. "I see it now: eight years I don't come back and ye thought we were done, you and me. But you were wrong and we'll ne'er be done. I knew ye from a little girl to a maiden t' the kindest, most beautiful woman…" Barbossa chokes. "I should've told you what were in me heart, Sophie darlin'. All these years, and I should've told you…"

Barbossa's so shattered that he can neither cry nor form the words that he'll never again have a chance to tell his Sophie Grantham, but where his tongue refuses to function, his dagger will speak. So he patiently scrapes and carves away at the wooden marker, hour after hour, sleeping only when it's too dark to see anymore, resuming his task come dawn.

It takes Barbossa the rest of the day to finish the inscription to his satisfaction; and, once he takes a look around, he realizes that the churchyard is the last place Sophie would wish to lie. For this hill looks far out over the sea, just like her widow's walk, and though his heart is heavy with loss, he takes comfort in knowing she will always be here, waiting for him, able to see his ship when it comes in.

-oOo-

-oOo-

He should have retired, Barbossa muses as he idles over his charts. He should have retired fifteen years ago, but the lure of the sea was too great and he was forced to choose between the two great loves of his life.

He never understood until now that he could have had both; that the sea didn't have to claim him to the end of his days.

For the past five years, Sophie's Port, as Barbossa has come to think of it, is one into which he takes his ship often because it's a favorite with his crew and a wise captain knows when to humor the men he leads. But for himself, he doesn't immediately go with them to shore, but remains back, slowly pacing his quarterdeck and gazing up at a hilltop singular for its view of the sea.

In those private moments, the deck becomes his own widow's walk; and, if he looks hard enough, Barbossa will swear he can see Sophie Grantham, standing at her grave with her arms held out, beckoning him to come when he is ready. He senses it will not be long now — a lifetime of terrible wounds, rough living, and illness have taken a harsh toll on him — but after surviving far longer than a man in his position has any call to, he is prepared to lay down his earthly burdens and accept what must come, and never more so than when he remembers the words he carved on Sophie's marker above and below her name:

 _May the peace you gave me be yours_

SOPHIE GRANTHAM

 _Beloved of Hector Barbossa._

 _When it be my time to join you, my darling,_

 _I shall rejoice,_

 _For then we shall spend Eternity together_

 _Side by side, hand in hand_

 _And ne'er shall tread the Widow's Walk again._


End file.
